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The Borno Police Command said its arrested a middle aged woman, Nsa Heneswa, Maiduguri for allegedly theft of three children with the intentions to sell them.
The state Commisioner of Police(CP), Abdu Umar, who disclosed in Maiduguri, that the suspect was arrested in the process of escaping with the 3 children, all of them below 7 years at the Borno Express Motor Park on Aug. 4, 2022.
Umar said that the suspect arrived Maiduguri on Wednesday August 3, and went straight to Monday market where she saw some vulnerable children popularly known as “Almajiri” begging on the road.
The suspects called one of the children and offered him N200. She then asked him to come with her to buy him some cloths. After that, she asked him to follow her to the motor park where she asked him to wait for her.
She then went back to the town in search for another victim. When she arrived at Yan’ Nono at the Bulumkutu, she pretended to be a customer and stole another child belonging to one Amina Ayuba, a local fresh milk seller and sneaked away.
When she arrived the motor park, she requested for a vehicle that was going to Lagos but members of the union told her it was already late. She then begged for a place to stay before the next day. Again, she went out and picked the third child, making three of them.
It was allaged that luck had ran out of the sexagenarian when she decided to take one of the kids to a local restaurant when he said he was hungry on Friday morning.
A Commercial driver operating on the Abuja line at the motor park began to asked him questions on how he knew the women then he confessed that she took him from Monday market.
Umar said that on noticing suspicious attitude in the response of the lady, the security and surveillance team at the motor park arrested the woman and handed her over to the Police for Investigation.
According to him, the women confessed to have handpicked the children and was planing to take them to Lagos.
Umar said that the suspect alongside her accomplices, may said to have been in the business of buying and selling of children for sometime before the long hand of the law caught up with her last weekend.
The Commisioner of Police said that the investigation is still ongoing.
Speaking in custody she said that she was paid N500,000 for the mission.
When asked what she was going to with the children, Heneswa said that she was taking them to “Lady B” in Victoria Inland Lagos who promised to balanced her the remaining payment on delivery of the children.
“Honestly, this was my first time of doing this. I have never done this before. A woman in Lagos introduced me to this. I also have a nurse who was assisting me in the Maiduguri Specialist Hospital,”she said.
NAN report that there has been an increase in cases of child theft in Nigeria. The country ranks high on the global list of African countries involved in cross-border and internal trafficking.
According to a United Nation’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report, human trafficking is the third-largest crime in Nigeria after economic fraud and drug trafficking. At least ten children are sold across the country every day.